This study can be understood as an unusually intelligent attempt to think through the propositio4/17/2006

A Unified History of Philosophy as Skepticism

This study can be understood as an unusually intelligent attempt to think through the proposition that the history of philosophy is the history of a set of problems. Those problems can perhaps best be subsumed under the rubric of skepticism. Beginning with an all-too-brief discussion of Plato, the central chapters (the `meat' of the book) are concerned with Maimonides and his purported `influence' on (or similarities with) Hobbes. Keep in mind that Botwinick doesn't insist on this influence as a matter of historical fact noting that any similarities could be ascribed to the later philosopher (i.e., Hobbes) reaching the same conclusions independently. This central discussion of Maimonides and Hobbes is followed by a brief discussion of the modern, premodern, and the postmodern which, in turn, is then followed by a concluding chapter on Nietzsche. Now, how many books do you know that study Maimonides and Nietzsche?

Briefly, Botwinick attempts to show that Plato "theorized the limitations of reason" long before it became fashionable to do so in our present postmodernism. Plato lays waste to the theory of Ideas in his `Parmenides' and shows, according to our author, that "there is no way to legitimately arrest the search for Forms at the level of the first Form that encompasses all the particulars that fall below it; but one must ground that Form itself in some still higher Form that grounds it and so on indefinitely." This futility, or so it here seems, will set the standard for Western philosophy. The grand Theories, which attempt to explain the `facts', end up as groundless as the brute facts themselves: "the groundlessness of fact is read back into the status of theory [...] so that each remains as uncertain as the other." This is the sort of thing that Botwinick will refer to as an `equivalence' throughout this book. They, facts and theories, "are equivalent in terms of what they exclude: unequivocal contact with a reality beyond our linguistic formulations."

So how (and indeed, why) does Botwinick drag poor Rabbi Maimonides into all this? The wedge he uses to acclimate us to a `skeptical' Maimonides is the so-called `negative theology' of Maimonides. Negative Theology, for those of you that don't know, is the insistence that "none of the adjectives, adverbs, and verbs monotheistic theological texts ascribe to God can be construed literally". According to Botwinick, negative theology "becomes the analytic tool that enable Maimonides to effect his equivalence between religion and philosophy." ...One wonders if Botwinick perhaps means to erect a `negative philosophy' too? Be that as it may, of this equivalence between `God's Word and philosophy' Botwinick says that this equivalence underscores "the exclusion of a common feature: the approximation to truth in a substantive sense."

But how does our hardheaded Thomas Hobbes -the English are so practical- get caught up in this? First our author establishes a political equivalence between authority and consent in the texts of Maimonides. Without Moses willingness (consent) to hear the Voice of God there would be no revelation at all. But there may be a deeper equivalence between these two Maimonidean equivalences: "Torah and philosophical truth and authority and consent. The first equivalence devolves upon the second, which in turn emphasizes the human taint in even the most grandiose metaphysical and conceptual constructions."...Or is this merely another kind of `Third Man' argument? In which, instead of Forms being continually supplanted by ever higher-level forms, we have equivalences subsumed by higher-order equivalences? ...Hmmm.

Where was I? Oh yes, Hobbes - now with the introduction of politics and the `human taint' we can now turn to Hobbes. ...But first, why Hobbes? Why not Machiavelli? One comes away suspecting that it is the relative `friendliness' of Hobbes to Revealed Religion. Machiavelli wants to restore the old (values of the) pagan religion. Hobbes texts do not seem to cry out for that. In any case, Hobbes adds to the above an "elaboration of an equivalence between reason and antireason." This is done by Hobbes showing that "reason serves as voice and adjunct to the passions." Botwinick argues that "the passions need to be understood as a vacuous, tautologous category bereft of a priori specification that gets filled in with content on the basis of the multiple and unpredictable ways in which human beings project and interact with "reality"." Thus Hobbes establishes an equivalence between reason and the passions, each is the others alibi.

Botwinick calls Nietzsche the "ultimate system builder of Western Thought. He seeks to invoke the category of power as the `category of categories' in an endless spinning of equivalences" Power is "not meant to explain or account for anything but to create a theoretically empty space to be filled in by later human intellectual and practical interventions." Thus Nietzsche's understanding of Power, according to our author, is the means that philosophers use to spin ever new equivalences and systems. Philosophical Theory, beneath the radar of non-philosophers, creates the space in which the future (or, if you prefer, the new) can emerge.

Briefly, I would say that the problem of skepticism is central to Botwinick. This skepticism, at bottom, causes philosophy to continuously create its comprehensive theories, but this same skepticism (or perhaps only an uncomprehending fate) eats away at these philosophical artifacts until they too, or so one suspects, need to be overturned by yet another creation. Thus ending this study of Maimonides and Hobbes with Nietzsche is really not very surprising at all. - Can you say Eternal Return of the Same? But in closing I want to add that the skepticism Botwinick here traces is but nihilism (as Hume quietly indicated so long ago) and, even though Botwinick is at great pains to argue that we can live with this skepticism, in my opinion, no one can live with that.

This is an exciting book, rich in detail, especially on Maimonides and Hobbes that deserves many more readers and repays careful re-readings. Know your Maimonides, Hobbes and Nietzsche and be prepared to work. I have, for the most part, merely summarized the introduction to this book because the richness of detail - especially on Maimonides and Hobbes - precludes anything else in the space Amazon offers. Highly recommended!...more

For an author who is most often despised, and occasionally revered, one is surprised on howReview:

February 2006

The enticing ambiguities of Leo Strauss

For an author who is most often despised, and occasionally revered, one is surprised on how little consensus there is on what Leo Strauss actually thought. In this brief review I would like to give the prospective reader a little taste of the great enigma that is Leo Strauss.

The difficulty is this, in reading Leo Strauss one always gets the feeling that one is either on the edge of a rather large insight or the target of an elaborate, but delightfully subtle, joke. In the essay on Maimonides ("Maimonides Statement on Political Science," p155-169) LS speaks a great deal about the (meaning of the) order of Maimonides' listing of the divisions and subdivisions of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy, all the while taking special note of the central topic. Centers of lists, books, chapters, and so forth are very important to LS - they represent the least exposed position, and thus (perhaps!) the place to look for the philosophers true meaning.

Maimonides' list:

1. Theoretical Philosophy:

A. Math:

i. Arithmetic ii. Geometry iii. Astronomy iv. Music

B. Physics

C. Theology:

i. God, Angels ii. Metaphysics

2. Practical Philosophy:

A. Man's Governance of himself. B. Governance of the household. C. Governance of the City. D. Governance of the Nations.

Unfortunately, or so it seems, there is more than one center to our list. There are two "centers" to this list considered as a whole. If one only pays attention to the ABC divisions the center is 2A: Man's Governance of himself. However, if one pays attention to the i,ii,iii subdivisions the center of the whole list is 1C.i: God and Angels. Furthermore, the center of theoretical Philosophy itself is either (in the ABC division) 1B -Physics or (in the i, ii, iii subdivision) 1A.iv -Music. Interestingly, of the 3 major divisions within theoretical philosophy only Physics isn't further subdivided. And (perhaps somewhat more alarmingly) there is no center at all to Practical Philosophy considered on its own.

Practical Philosophy has no center but one of its elements (2A, in the ABC division) is a contender to be the center of the whole of philosophy. Of the centers considered (two for the whole of philosophy, Man's Governance of himself and God and Angels; and two for theoretical philosophy, Physics and Music) only one (God and Angels) could, I think, be considered orthodox or religious. Thus one could (perhaps) be forgiven for thinking that what LS is insinuating, by drawing our attention to this list of Maimonides, is that (with the possible exception of Physics, which has no subdivisions) theoretical philosophy & practical philosophy are based on nothing but Man; the different types and needs of men. Psychology, apparently, is indeed the Queen of the Sciences, as Nietzsche much later maintained.

In any case, when LS says that, "[w]e are tempted to say that the Logic [i.e. the book by Maimonides where the above list occurs] is the only philosophic book which Maimonides ever wrote" one is eerily reminded of how LS saw fit to end the previous essay (How Farabi Read Plato's Laws, p134 -154): "[w]e admire the ease with which Farabi invented Platonic speeches." Now, is LS actually denying that Maimonides later work is philosophical? Or, is the speech (or purpose) LS seemingly attributes to Maimonides' list an invention? Has LS here `invented' a Maimonidean speech?

Further, if one takes into consideration the beginning of the Farabi essay (the observations by LS on Farabi's story about the mystic dissembling to escape a city) one is forced to wonder if (or to what degree) LS seriously meant what he indicates, or can be said to indicate, here. Or, another possibility, is LS `criticizing' Maimonides for daring to be so bold? Does a `genuine' philosopher ever dare say what he actually thinks? By not mentioning the youthfulness of Maimonides when he wrote this work (the `Logic' supposedly was written when he was 16!) is LS drawing our attention to it, seemingly to emphasize that no genuine philosopher would ever speak so frankly when mature? Thus, if this line of interpretation were correct, Maimonides, at the height of his powers (i.e. in the Guide), would never, or so LS maintains above, risk writing a philosophic work.

The central chapters, btw, of `What is Political Philosophy' are the essays on Farabi and Maimonides. ...Strauss was not young when he wrote them.

Additionally, I should point out that in the Farabi essay Strauss draws our attention not only to the similarity between philosophers and the pious (i.e. both face persecution) but also to the differences between them.

"We must understand this in the light of the story of the pious ascetic. Plato was not a pious ascetic. Whereas the pious ascetic almost always says explicitly and unambiguously what he thinks, Plato almost never says explicitly and unambiguously what he thinks. But Plato has something in common with the pious ascetic. Both are sometimes compelled to state truths which are dangerous to either themselves or others. Since they are both men of judgment, they act in such cases in the same way; they state the dangerous truth by surrounding it properly, with the result that they are not believed in what they say. It is in this manner that Plato has written about laws."

This last is directly attributed to Farabi by Strauss. Seemingly, LS would want us to choose between two alternatives: either Maimonides is a pious ascetic/mystic who "almost always says explicitly and unambiguously what he thinks" or he is a philosopher who "almost never says explicitly and unambiguously what he thinks". Eventually, one finds oneself wondering something similar about LS himself.

But why all this ambiguity?

"Farabi's Summary consists of allusions to those thoughts to which, as he thinks, Plato has alluded in the Laws. Farabi's allusions are meant to be helpful for men for whom Plato's allusions are not equally helpful: allusions which were intelligible to some of Plato's contemporaries are not equally intelligible to men of the same type among Farabi's contemporaries."

One can perhaps at this point be forgiven for adding that whereas Plato wrote allusively for ancient pagans and Farabi wrote allusively for medieval monotheists Strauss himself writes allusively for modern atheists. ...Is there then only one Philosophy?

Obviously I do not, btw, mean to claim that this is an exhaustive account of what LS says in these important essays. This is only a snapshot (i.e. a particular, if not peculiar, view) of what is going on in these essays; read and reread these, and the other essays, carefully to try to get a more comprehensive view....more